Monday morning the Supreme Court rejected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s request to speed up the process for a ruling on Virginia’s health care appeal.
By rejecting Virginia’s unusual request, the Court denied Cuccinelli’s request that its appeal bypass usual legal procedures to go directly before the nation’s highest court. Instead, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear Virginia’s appeal, scheduled for May 10.
So far five federal judges have heard challenges to Obama’s sweeping healthcare overhaul. Judges in Florida and Virginia have declared the law unconstitutional, while Democratic appointees in Michigan, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. have upheld Obamacare.
Virginia’s chief complaint with Obamacare is the individual mandate. Twenty-six states joined Florida’s appeal that Congress grossly overstepped its authority with this unprecedented requirement that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the government if they do not purchase coverage.
No justices sat out of Monday’s denial of fast-track process. Yet the slow route is new for Obamacare, a highly contested sweeping legislation that passed only when then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi invoked a bizarre, constitutionally-dubious “deem and pass” procedure that unseated civics as we know it and “deemed” the bill popular rather than put it to popular vote the way the American Constitution requires.
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HHS is about to issue over 1,000 pages of new regulations stemming from last year’s health care bill. That’s not a huge surprise, considering the bill is about 2,000 pages long.
But these regulations all come from a six-page section covering accountable care organizations, or ACOs.
According to Politico, John Gorman, who runs a health care consulting firm, “expects a 1,000-page rule to come out on Thursday, March 31 — because he doesn’t think HHS will want to deal with releasing the regulations on April Fool’s Day.”
As the House gets ready to pass the health care bill today, I’m reminded of one of the first lessons in economics I ever learned. Milton Friedman put it best:
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.
The biggest problem with health care today is that patients only pay 12 percent of costs out of pocket. As far as each individual is concerned, it’s basically on sale for 88 percent off! No wonder we spend so much on health care.
Today’s bill consists almost entirely of spending other peoples’ money on other people. If it becomes law, that 12 percent figure will fall even further. This is no way to keep costs under control. However noble Congress’ intentions may be, its bill will not work as advertised. Human nature won’t allow it.
Richard Morrison, Marc Scribner and Josh Barro join forces to being you Episode 79 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take on barriers to job creation, anti-capitalist murmurs in Davos, the iPad’s unapproved technology, laws against motorized texting and why it’s all or nothing in the healthcare debate.
Host Richard Morrison and co-host Jeremy Lott welcome special guests Lee Doren and Greg Conko to Episode 60 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with a recap of the 9/12 D.C. Tax Protest, look into union rules that hurt minority contractors and consider the alleged ethics violations of former California Assemblyman Mike Duvall. We then turn to Greg Conko for his thoughts on free market healthcare reform and finish with a tribute to The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, Norman Borlaug (1914-2009).
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